How to Protect Your Workers From Fatal Lung Disease

14^th November 2022

Breathing in dust, gases, fumes and vapours in the workplace can cause serious, long-term damage and often incurable health problems including fatal lung diseases such as lung cancer.

As an employer, you have a legal obligation to protect your workforce from such risks. Here we provide details on how you can ensure your workforce are protected and risks are minimised.

Identify the risks in your workplace

Each workplace has unique risks that can depend on a number of factors. Even if you work with the same substances or in a similar environment to others, your work comes with its own set of risks due to different influences including:

• The work environment
• The type of tasks being carried out
• The type of substances workers are exposed to

You must identify the risks in your workplace in order to fully protect your staff.

Understand your legal requirements

As an employer, you have a legal duty of care to control the risks in your workplace. Concerning protecting your workers from fatal lung disease, legislation states that any employee required to wear a tight-fitting respiratory device must be face-fit tested as stipulated by the Approved Codes of Practice supporting COSHH, CAR and CLAW.

At Advanced Safety Group we provide face-fit training and testing (qualitative and quantitative). You can rest assured that our training courses enable you to comply with all current respiratory legislation.

Protect your workforce

As stated, face-fit training and testing is a legal requirement and is used to protect your workers from harmful substances such as:

• Silica dust
• Wood dust
• Welding fumes
• Asbestos (specific legislation applies)

Our in-house courses Fit2Fit accredited face fit testing ensures your staff are trained on the use of their individual masks, correct wear and maintenance of them. This ensures your staff are kept safe, reducing their risk of developing a fatal lung disease and your company is compliant along with fitting in with your business to ensure training is completed at a convenient time.

Certification renewal

It is also stipulated that face-fit testing must be regularly repeated in order for you to continue to protect your workforce, as HSE guidance states certification must be renewed every two years or less.

This is to ensure properly fitted masks and a fully protected workforce, as your face shape changes with age, dental work or lifestyle habits a mask can become ill-fitting and therefore unsafe. For young workers, it may be wise to do tests more regularly due to the increased likelihood of their facial characteristics changing.

Get in touch today to find out more and book a course.